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With Great Power #362... 22 Panels with Jeremy Whitley · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels
0:06
Tad Eggleston: Returning Knight for the fourth time, I had to look it up. I somehow forgot one of them, because I had it down as 3, and I looked it up, and I went, oh, 4!
0:16
Tad Eggleston: All right. Which one did I miss?
0:19
Tad Eggleston: Or forget.
0:22
Tad Eggleston: I feel bad.
0:24
Tad Eggleston: is Jeremy Whitley. Jeremy, how are things?
0:29
Jeremy Whitley: Good, I think one more and I get a free sub or something, right?
0:33
Tad Eggleston: I mean, we keep talking about making t-shirts, because, you know, my wife makes… T-shirts.
0:43
Tad Eggleston: So, you know, we feel… and my wife is a big Saturday Night Live fan, so, like, the five-timers is a thing.
0:52
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
0:54
Jeremy Whitley: I'm almost there.
0:56
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah. But then we actually have to go figure out who's there.
1:01
Tad Eggleston: Cause.
1:03
Tad Eggleston: I figured out…
1:04
Tad Eggleston: I've gotten better at looking every time somebody's on. Hey, how many times have you been here?
1:10
Jeremy Whitley: and.
1:12
Tad Eggleston: But I don't have, like, a list anywhere. I need an assistant to go find that, to make the list.
1:20
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, fourth time. I suddenly had it in my head, though, wait a minute, wait a minute. Were there 4 already, and I forgot to add one? Or were there 3 already, and I added this one? There were 3 already. You were with Great Power 179, 234, 298, and now.
1:41
Tad Eggleston: I think it's 362?
1:44
Jeremy Whitley: Alright, I'm behind.
1:45
Tad Eggleston: 3… 362.
1:48
Tad Eggleston: 360 second interview, the 951st overall recording when I put you up later tonight.
1:58
Jeremy Whitley: It's a lot of recordings.
2:00
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we're just under 5 years, too, so…
2:04
Tad Eggleston: Some people say I'm a little obsessed.
2:08
Tad Eggleston: I wouldn't say that. That's possible.
2:11
Tad Eggleston: Well, of course you wouldn't say that. I plug your books.
2:16
Jeremy Whitley: It seems like perfectly normal behavior.
2:18
Tad Eggleston: Hahaha Speaking of which… I'm gonna give you a little bit of a…
2:28
Tad Eggleston: jab here, because, like, I adore navigating with you.
2:34
Tad Eggleston: And I adore navigating with you, too, except that, like, really?
2:40
Tad Eggleston: Navigating with you, too?
2:43
Jeremy Whitley: We went through…
2:45
Tad Eggleston: you.
2:45
Jeremy Whitley: We must have had 20 different, like…
2:49
Jeremy Whitley: Titles that we were just, like…
2:52
Jeremy Whitley: What about this? And what about that? And it ended up coming down to a, like.
2:58
Jeremy Whitley: All of the things that we suggested were either…
3:01
Jeremy Whitley: Like, just too… too cutesy, too…
3:05
Jeremy Whitley: Navigating with two, navigating to you, all these things were just, like.
3:10
Tad Eggleston: All right.
3:11
Jeremy Whitley: little too cutesy, or they were just like so far from.
3:16
Jeremy Whitley: the title navigating with you that like it's like people won't know this is a book, too.
3:21
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you're allowed to do a subtitle.
3:24
Jeremy Whitley: I mean, finally Mad Cave made the call on that one. They were like, we'll just call it volume two. And I was like, sure.
3:30
Tad Eggleston: you.
3:31
Jeremy Whitley: All right, sounds perfectly fine.
3:33
Tad Eggleston: In doubt, blame editorial.
3:35
Jeremy Whitley: laugh
3:37
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I blame me for not coming up with a good enough title that we didn't just go with Volume 2.
3:44
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I… it's not a… it's not a huge deal, obviously, but I was… I was taken aback when I got the file, and I'm like, really? It's called Navigating with You Too. That was unexpected.
4:02
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
4:03
Jeremy Whitley: We played around with a lot of different things, but that was… we just ended up with Volume 2.
4:09
Tad Eggleston: Right.
4:10
Tad Eggleston: Give me the front counter pitch and then I'll dig in some.
4:14
Jeremy Whitley: So for, anybody who's read the first Navigating With You, obviously that's a book about
4:21
Jeremy Whitley: two girls who are new in school in Durham, North Carolina, they're both coming from different places, have different issues, and connect over this, this one manga that they were both into as kids, but neither of them have ever finished, so they decide to put together their own little
4:37
Jeremy Whitley: book club for just the two of them, and they're gonna have a competition to track down these books, and finally read them all. And over the course of this, this very quickly goes from being a competition to a friendship to a relationship, but it's all about… I tell people at cons, it's about.
4:57
Jeremy Whitley: you know, your…
4:58
Jeremy Whitley: bonding and forming an unstoppable relationship, over your love of obscure manga, which I feel like most of us who are in comics have had some version of that at some point, of just, like.
5:13
Jeremy Whitley: You found the one other person that likes that book you like, and now you're best friends forever.
5:19
Jeremy Whitley: And then, so Volume 2 picks up from the end of Volume 1. At the end of Volume 1, Gabby's family had to move back to Florida, so, Gabby and Nisha are trying to make a long-distance relationship work and keep up their book club. I think pretty early on, it becomes obvious that the book club thing isn't quite working.
5:38
Jeremy Whitley: They decide that they're going to, start watching this
5:41
Jeremy Whitley: anime together and having these sort of, you know, watch together parties.
5:47
Jeremy Whitley: From…
5:49
Jeremy Whitley: you know, they're from halfway across the country. Meanwhile, they're both trying to navigate their senior year of high school, one in North Carolina and one in Florida, and they're overcoming a… trying to overcome a lot of different things, including, Nisha.
6:05
Jeremy Whitley: volunteering and, getting back into politics, and Gabby, getting back into her life in Florida, and finding out that some of her old friends are still her old friends, and that some things that.
6:18
Jeremy Whitley: she was sure we're going to be the same, have changed since she left. So.
6:24
Jeremy Whitley: It's a wild combination. If you if you liked the first one, I think you'll love the second one. And if as with some people, you felt like the first one was a little too neat and too cozy, this one is I think a little more messy.
6:40
Tad Eggleston: I, I agree with both of those statements. I liked the first one, and I'm loving this one, and it's definitely messier.
6:50
Tad Eggleston: But in, like, a really realistic way, like, that's an age where…
6:59
Tad Eggleston: Like, I teach high school, and… and I…
7:03
Tad Eggleston: I never know how to even begin to describe to my kids how much their life is gonna change.
7:12
Tad Eggleston: In the year or two after high school, and how much it will change AGAIN.
7:21
Tad Eggleston: And, like, the 5 years after that.
7:23
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
7:24
Tad Eggleston: You know, there's… there's nothing… nothing that… that…
7:31
Tad Eggleston: Nothing that we experience in our teens can really.
7:35
Tad Eggleston: Prepare us for how complicated life gets.
7:42
Tad Eggleston: When we're responsible for ourselves.
7:46
Tad Eggleston: You know, whether that's going to college, or going to the workforce, or… you know…
7:53
Tad Eggleston: And, like, that's… that's part of what this…
7:57
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't even know if where I'm at, the girls.
8:01
Tad Eggleston: Fully realize that that's what they're… Starting to grapple with?
8:07
Tad Eggleston: Is that as much as their own relationship, they're grappling with, oh.
8:12
Tad Eggleston: Next year…
8:14
Tad Eggleston: I have to be able to drive my own car. Next year, will I be at the right school? Next year.
8:22
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
8:23
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I think… You know, one of the things I love about
8:27
Jeremy Whitley: stuff like… like Buffy, especially, is… I think Buffy is based very much on the premise that, like.
8:34
Jeremy Whitley: everything feels like this in high school. Everything feels like it's life or death, everything feels like there's monsters and demons and vampires just around the corner, and, like, you don't, you know, if you don't make it through all of this stuff on any given day, it might be the end of you.
8:50
Jeremy Whitley: And I think any any good story about high school, even if it's just
8:57
Jeremy Whitley: Just regular slice-of-life stuff still has to have a little bit of that feeling of, like.
9:04
Jeremy Whitley: you know, this… this is the first time this has happened, or this is the last time this will happen, this is the last time you'll ever see this person. You know, everything is, tangent completely, and you have…
9:16
Jeremy Whitley: you have to make choices, I mean, pretty much every day your senior year of high school, about, like, what you think the rest of your life is gonna be like, and what your, you know, what your intentions are to do with the rest of it. And who knows whether that stuff
9:30
Jeremy Whitley: You know, how much of it it ultimately decides, but it certainly feels like…
9:34
Jeremy Whitley: You know, it's life or death.
9:38
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
9:39
Tad Eggleston: That's the other thing that I always laugh at quietly at high school, like, at the end of the period when it's just the teachers left in the room, and it's like, don't you remember when that seemed important?
9:53
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
9:55
Tad Eggleston: It's like, you know, particularly because we see it so often, most of us aren't…
10:00
Tad Eggleston: aren't the type to, like, downgrade the importance. We know how important it is to them, and it's like this mixture of, God, I'm glad that I don't get that worked up about something like that anymore, and…
10:15
Tad Eggleston: God, was it nice when life was so simple that that was a big deal?
10:21
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
10:22
Jeremy Whitley: I mean, I… you know, I have two kids, and, like, listening to them talk about
10:28
Jeremy Whitley: Kids they go to school with that, like.
10:32
Jeremy Whitley: Hate them or that they hate and it's like, yeah, but why.
10:38
Jeremy Whitley: Why? And it's like, it's always a dumb reason, but also it's then, like.
10:43
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, but, like, why does it matter? You don't… you don't interact with this kid that much. You're not even in a class with this kid. Why, like, why is this a thing? But it's the most important thing.
10:53
Tad Eggleston: Because they're in the same building.
10:55
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
10:56
Jeremy Whitley: I mean.
10:57
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, just like it's much easier to make friends when you're in school.
11:03
Tad Eggleston: It's a much bigger deal when people don't like you.
11:07
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. When you're in school, because you can't really…
11:10
Tad Eggleston: Like, somebody doesn't like you once you live on your own or whatnot.
11:15
Tad Eggleston: Unless they're your boss… It's really easy to never interact with them.
11:23
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
11:24
Jeremy Whitley: I mean, there, there are a lot of people, especially like being a writer and working from home most of the time, like.
11:30
Tad Eggleston: Hey!
11:30
Jeremy Whitley: If I interact with somebody and they are annoying or unpleasant, I'm just never going to deal with that person again. : I don't.
11:37
Tad Eggleston: Hey.
11:39
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, it's very easy for me not to.
11:43
Tad Eggleston: Like, I'm not going to that convenience store again.
11:47
Tad Eggleston: Even if it was another customer. It's like, well…
11:51
Jeremy Whitley: I'll go to the one 2 blocks away.
11:54
Tad Eggleston: Right.
11:55
Jeremy Whitley: Easy enough.
11:56
Tad Eggleston: Or the one that's actually 2 blocks closer to my house. I'll just wait to stop. I won't stop the.
12:02
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
12:04
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, like…
12:07
Tad Eggleston: That's… that's the thing, like, like, school is such a smaller world, so, I mean, for… for… for your two…
12:16
Tad Eggleston: characters, I mean, you've done two things to them. First, you have them as seniors, and staring down
12:22
Tad Eggleston: the real world, but second, you split them up again. After… I mean, not split them up from dating, but, like, after having that intense time together.
12:34
Tad Eggleston: Now they're hours away. It's, what, Maryland and Florida?
12:37
Jeremy Whitley: North Carolina.
12:39
Tad Eggleston: North Carolina, Florida. So, not quite as bad, but… but neither of them drive, so that's pretty bad.
12:45
Jeremy Whitley: Well, yeah, I mean Nisha drives, but like that's still what's a hell of a trip. I mean, I live in Durham, which is where Nisha is living. Atlanta is seven hours from me. Florida is another five to seven on top of that. If we're talking about Miami, that's like a day's.
13:02
Tad Eggleston: That's true.
13:04
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah. And that's like, especially, you know, she's, she's got cerebral palsy. She doesn't want to be stuck in the car all day. Right.
13:11
Tad Eggleston: Right?
13:12
Jeremy Whitley: So, like, yeah, that's…
13:15
Jeremy Whitley: an almost insurmountable distance just because in the South that's like crossing through three or four different worlds to get to get to Florida.
13:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
13:26
Jeremy Whitley: North Carolina.
13:27
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
13:29
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
13:30
Tad Eggleston: So.
13:32
Tad Eggleston: Like… I know I asked with Volume 1, I had you on with Volume 1, but I've completely forgotten.
13:41
Tad Eggleston: And it'll feed into… more specific questions for Volume 2, like… like, why these characters? What… what…
13:53
Tad Eggleston: What made you decide that, that…
13:57
Tad Eggleston: We're writing two girls, we're giving them these specific set of problems.
14:03
Tad Eggleston: And then, what made you decide?
14:06
Tad Eggleston: Oh, now we're gonna split them up.
14:08
Jeremy Whitley: you.
14:11
Jeremy Whitley: So with Nisha, there was a lot of things in her character that I wanted to deal with, because, like, when I knew I was gonna write a romance story.
14:21
Jeremy Whitley: I had been… when I had worked on Unstoppable Wasp over at Marvel, I had had a character in that that had cerebral palsy, and, had…
14:32
Jeremy Whitley: I had a fan who was also a writer, who had cerebral palsy, who gave me a lot of great input on that character, and was really excited to help and talk about it. And then when I had this opportunity to do this story, I was like, okay, I know I want to have a…
14:50
Jeremy Whitley: A romance. I think comics.
14:53
Jeremy Whitley: so rarely shows characters with disabilities a lot, especially certain types of comics, especially romance. But comics is so good at being able to demonstrate
15:04
Jeremy Whitley: Like, what this looks like in a way that, you know.
15:08
Jeremy Whitley: It's not like books where somebody can tell you something about what a character looks like and you have to picture it and hold it in your mind and remember, you know, whenever stuff is happening, oh yes, they are also dealing with this, but in comics it's always, you know, when it's a.
15:22
Tad Eggleston: It's also not like movies where it's often, like, over-exaggerated and becomes… All of it.
15:31
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I mean, that was my…
15:33
Jeremy Whitley: That was a big thing for me, is I didn't want this book to be about any of the things that make them different. I didn't want it to be a coming out book. I didn't want it to be a disability book.
15:44
Tad Eggleston: probably.
15:45
Jeremy Whitley: to be factors of their characters that are then like.
15:49
Tad Eggleston: I mean, honestly, I do think… I think that the reader is often exactly where Nisha would want them to be, which is…
15:57
Tad Eggleston: forgets that she has a disability until when and if they… they have to remember. And then we'll forget again, as… as…
16:06
Tad Eggleston: They just fall back into her story.
16:08
Tad Eggleston: Vietnam.
16:11
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, and I mean…
16:12
Jeremy Whitley: With them, it was… and, you know, Gabby is also, you know, Gabby has a lot of elements of things from my own life.
16:21
Jeremy Whitley: you know, her… her dad is Mexican, my grandfather on that side is Mexican, and I, you know, he's…
16:27
Jeremy Whitley: That character is named after my grandfather. But like, you know, she's sort of living this, life is sort of a mixed family. She is dealing with much more in the way of, like, psychological trauma after, you know, having.
16:42
Tad Eggleston: lot.
16:42
Jeremy Whitley: her mom in a car accident, she is dealing with a much more of like a mental disability.
16:49
Jeremy Whitley: you know, with Ptsd. So like, those are both things I wanted to like have in this story that I knew was gonna be a
16:56
Jeremy Whitley: you know, somewhat light-hearted slice-of-life romance, is, you know, these characters who are
17:02
Jeremy Whitley: complicated, that are dealing with a lot of stuff in their lives, but those things are just part of their lives, they're not defining the story. This isn't…
17:11
Jeremy Whitley: about, you know, Nisha's parents breaking up. It isn't about, Gabby's mom dying, but all those things are just sort of, like.
17:19
Jeremy Whitley: in the background all the time, the way so many things are when you're a teenager in high school. You're dealing with all these things, but then you just still have to show up to school, and…
17:28
Jeremy Whitley: you know, learned about calculus.
17:31
Tad Eggleston: Right.
17:32
Tad Eggleston: And then you introduce the, the, the…
17:39
Tad Eggleston: I think this book, to me, has… two
17:47
Tad Eggleston: major… what's the word I'm looking for?
17:53
Tad Eggleston: Conflicts.
17:55
Tad Eggleston: Two major conflicts get introduced.
17:58
Tad Eggleston: The first is, is… As they realize, in different ways.
18:06
Tad Eggleston: That this… this plan they have to go.
18:10
Tad Eggleston: to the same school in Wilmington.
18:15
Tad Eggleston: May or may not actually be…
18:19
Tad Eggleston: What's right for either of them?
18:22
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
18:23
Tad Eggleston: But then, on top of that, like, they've got this long-distance relationship, and they're making it
18:29
Tad Eggleston: Work. They're doing well with it.
18:32
Tad Eggleston: But they also each have somebody close to them.
18:38
Tad Eggleston: In proximity, who's also close to them.
18:42
Tad Eggleston: emotionally, And… In one case, it's an X, and in one case, it's a… it's a…
18:50
Tad Eggleston: I know you're taken and that sucks.
18:54
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
18:56
Tad Eggleston: So, so, like, you're really kind of exploring the whole…
19:06
Tad Eggleston: The whole gamut of what you can cram into that senior year in high school or freshman year of college.
19:12
Tad Eggleston: In terms of…
19:14
Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, was it… was it just you had the feeling, let's throw the whole kitchen sink at it, or… or did the characters just kind of take you there?
19:26
Jeremy Whitley: So yeah, I think I talked about when I was here talking about volume one that originally volume one was another, you know, 90 pages beyond what I wrote, and Mad Cave was very
19:38
Jeremy Whitley: Graciously said, you were contracted for 200 pages, but if we… if we made this 300, that would be a lot more expensive, we'd have to charge a lot more, and it would not…
19:47
Jeremy Whitley: we know that it would be a price point that we'd have difficulty selling. So you're going to edit it down to 200 pages. And you know, my editor and I got it down to about 220.
20:00
Jeremy Whitley: And we both sort of came to the conclusion that, like, if we took more pages out, it was gonna get markedly worse with every page we took out. So, we talked Mad Cave into letting us get 220 pages.
20:14
Jeremy Whitley: But I think what ultimately that meant was finding a point that I was happy to end the book and potentially let it go right, like you know.
20:27
Tad Eggleston: Right.
20:27
Jeremy Whitley: We have to see where the… see how the book did, and see if it justified making more.
20:34
Jeremy Whitley: Which, you know, we didn't know for sure how it was gonna do, and whether it would cross that bar for Mad Cave. Luckily, it did. So, you know, we've gotten to that point where, like.
20:45
Jeremy Whitley: Gabby going back to Florida, and then sort of deciding, like, we're still gonna be together, we're gonna figure this out, was a good place to, like, end that story. And if I didn't get to come back to it.
20:56
Jeremy Whitley: it was gonna be somewhere that I was fine leaving it off.
21:01
Jeremy Whitley: But, you know, there was still more story I wanted to tell with them, so, like.
21:05
Jeremy Whitley: getting this opportunity to do the second book. The the 1st thing I was like.
21:10
Jeremy Whitley: Alright, like, I know…
21:12
Jeremy Whitley: what sort of complications are gonna arise? Because without Gabby there to take up all of her time and be the thing that's… that she's focusing on, Nisha's going to want to get back into
21:25
Jeremy Whitley: activism and politics and things like that. She's going to remember, like, oh, these are the things I really care about outside of you know, my girlfriend, so this is the stuff that I gotta jump on.
21:38
Jeremy Whitley: Which is also not necessarily stuff that, like.
21:41
Jeremy Whitley: Gabby is as interested in. So there's gonna be some of that pulling them apart. You know, even
21:49
Jeremy Whitley: just by the the nature of what they pick up and what they pay attention to. And then I wanted to bring back something that like
21:57
Jeremy Whitley: we mention in the first book, because we… they have this moment where they're riding in the car, and, like, they're trying to learn more about each other, and they decide to sort of go through their exes and talk about these past relationships that didn't work. And, we mentioned Gabby's ex-Caradad, who appears, I think, in all of
22:16
Jeremy Whitley: one or two panels in the first volume, and that, like, this was her first girlfriend, her first moment with, like, a non-hetero relationship, and that this girl just, like, broke up with her via text, like, never, you know.
22:33
Jeremy Whitley: Just really broke her heart.
22:36
Jeremy Whitley: And so this, like, moment of her going back to Florida, I knew I didn't want to bring her terrible boyfriend Josh back into this book, because he's… quite dispensed with. Any, like, going back to him would be a huge regression for, for Gabby. But I did want to, like.
22:52
Jeremy Whitley: have elements of her… of her romantic past that showed back up. And so having Caridad, you know, now having transferred to the same school that she goes to, and having this moment of, like.
23:04
Jeremy Whitley: Oh, maybe… this thing that I've been holding on to that was such a big deal for me.
23:11
Jeremy Whitley: was a very different experience for this other person, and that, you know, they've had just as
23:17
Jeremy Whitley: Just as huge of a, like…
23:19
Jeremy Whitley: year of… of problems and disappointments and big changes as Gabby has had. And so, like. they had… she has to sort of take this moment and step back and say, like.
23:32
Jeremy Whitley: Oh, what… what is…
23:34
Jeremy Whitley: Actually true about this moment? What is actually true about this person, and is this somebody that I'm… I'm… Interested in having back in my life in any capacity.
23:46
Tad Eggleston: I like that.
23:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I like that in the book, but I like the way you described that, too. You've clearly worked on how to say it without spoiling it. This is definitely one of the books where it's like, oh, I want to ask this question, but that's kinda…
24:02
Tad Eggleston: It's kind of a big deal to ask about.
24:05
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I mean, it's a funny thing, because it is, like, it's a slice-of-life book, so there's nothing that happens in this book that is, like.
24:11
Jeremy Whitley: A huge twist.
24:13
Tad Eggleston: Right.
24:13
Jeremy Whitley: You know, but it is, like…
24:16
Tad Eggleston: But in some ways, that makes you want everybody to be able to experience all of… I mean, I think, actually, like.
24:24
Tad Eggleston: I'm more hesitant when talking about specific events in a sequel than I am in a first book.
24:32
Tad Eggleston: In the first book, you're trying to suck people in. And yes, I'd love to suck more people into the sequel than read the first one, but there's also this big chunk of people
24:42
Tad Eggleston: That already have a relationship with those characters.
24:45
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
24:46
Tad Eggleston: So really, all I need to say is, you know those characters you love? You're gonna keep loving them. Go read the book. And I worry about what I can do for… their…
24:57
Tad Eggleston: experience with the book, because particularly in a slice of life, you don't know which is the part that they want to find out on their own. It's not a…
25:06
Tad Eggleston: Cool, obvious twist.
25:11
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. You know, it's not, I see dead people, it's… you.
25:17
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I mean, it's all… you know, I tried very hard to make sure that anything anybody does in this is based very much in
25:24
Jeremy Whitley: parts of their character that we've already firmly established that nobody is making a decision that doesn't make sense.
25:30
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, except Nisha's seeing dead people.
25:33
Jeremy Whitley: Yes.
25:34
Tad Eggleston: That's new.
25:35
Jeremy Whitley: Although, I mean, that… considering… I don't know if,
25:42
Jeremy Whitley: If you read any of the sections where her mom is watching a
25:47
Jeremy Whitley: is… has this obsession with this new show that's called Haunted House Hotties.
25:53
Tad Eggleston: Yes!
25:53
Jeremy Whitley: A dating show that takes place in a haunted house. You'll never see any of this, but, like.
25:58
Jeremy Whitley: There's a moment where they're watching it and talking about it, where one of the few things we learn about it is that, part of the setup of the show is if you get
26:09
Jeremy Whitley: And if you get dumped by somebody, you literally like, you get ghosted. So you have to you have to actually wear, like, a, you know, sheet with cut out eye holes in it.
26:19
Tad Eggleston: You're a ghost.
26:25
Tad Eggleston: So, taking your, your, your horror… Love.
26:30
Tad Eggleston: that really doesn't show up in much of your comics. I mean, you had the one… was it a…
26:36
Tad Eggleston: You didn't kick… did you do it on Zoop? You've done the one horror comic, right?
26:41
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. It suddenly popped in my head. Yes, you came and pitched the one horror comic here, too.
26:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
26:48
Jeremy Whitley: Definitely a horror comic and.
26:51
Jeremy Whitley: You know, the graphic novel that I did for Titan, The Cold Ever After, it definitely has, like, pieces of horror in it. Yeah, and it's a fantasy, horror, romance, noir… something.
27:04
Tad Eggleston: It's your other non-strictly YA or middle grade book.
27:09
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Which is always funny to me, because I know that you also have your horror podcast.
27:14
Tad Eggleston: So, so here you are as the horror guy.
27:18
Tad Eggleston: Writing YA middle grade books for girls.
27:22
Tad Eggleston: How did… I know I've asked this question before, but I'm gonna do it again, because I forgot… I… you're the 300… this is the 361st interview. I can't remember everybody's specific answers. And I'm assuming that most of my listeners haven't listened to most of my episodes.
27:40
Jeremy Whitley: Well, it's a funny thing, because I think, like, I've always been…
27:45
Jeremy Whitley: a fantasy guy. Like, fantasy was my first love. I love superhero stuff, too, but fantasy is, like, what I grew up on. My dad, you know, my parents used to take me to Renaissance festivals. My dad's a big, like, Tolkien guy, so, like.
28:00
Jeremy Whitley: I think my first love. And when I came into writing comics, one of the first things that I wrote that actually took off that people know me for is Princelis, which I have the.
28:11
Tad Eggleston: Right.
28:11
Jeremy Whitley: Banner back there, which is, you know, a fantasy which I wrote is like.
28:19
Jeremy Whitley: I wrote kind of what I wanted to see, which is, you know, I have this character who is a, who is a princess who decides to save herself, who is going out on her own, and…
28:29
Jeremy Whitley: being the hero of her own story, and I wanted her to look like my own kids, who are, you know, mixed-race, you know, dark-skinned kids. And, so having a Black princess was a big part of that. And that book.
28:44
Jeremy Whitley: Hit it such a, like…
28:46
Jeremy Whitley: level that I think that's very much what people had the association with me for, and those are the… the other jobs that I got offered is, you know, alright, well, this is… this is a middle grades fantasy book, so he'd probably do good on My Little Pony, or Rainbow Bright, or, you know, and any of the…
29:05
Jeremy Whitley: other number of, of those books, and I really, really enjoy writing those books, and like I said, I love fantasy, but I've always been sort of a sucker for horror as well, and I think that's…
29:18
Jeremy Whitley: just been more so while I've been doing this podcast, while I've been doing Progressively Horrified, because I was a horror person, but, like, specifically, that was something that started out as a…
29:30
Jeremy Whitley: like, a pandemic project of, like, me and my friends who I wasn't getting to hang out with because they live far away, putting together this, thing where we can have this excuse to watch a scary movie and then sit around and talk about it.
29:46
Jeremy Whitley: And then I started doing this enough and talking to enough people who
29:51
Jeremy Whitley: I've done sort of, like, scholarly work in this that I was like, yeah, horror is actually, like, a thing that I really love and really care about, and I think there's a lot of…
29:59
Jeremy Whitley: Has a lot to say.
30:03
Jeremy Whitley: And I think… I have written a bunch of, like, horror pitches and treatments, and a lot of stuff that hasn't quite made it out into the publishing sphere yet, but are definitely things I'm interested in doing.
30:18
Jeremy Whitley: But I think it's… it's generally been much easier for me to, connect those dots in such a way that people say, oh, well, you did.
30:27
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
30:28
Tad Eggleston: I was about to say.
30:28
Jeremy Whitley: potentially.
30:29
Tad Eggleston: student.
30:29
Jeremy Whitley: Blast, you did.
30:30
Tad Eggleston: You may have been typecast.
30:33
Jeremy Whitley: A little bit, yeah.
30:34
Tad Eggleston: Little bit. Little bit typecast.
30:36
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
30:36
Tad Eggleston: Which I mean.
30:37
Jeremy Whitley: man.
30:38
Tad Eggleston: You have children, so, If being typecast pays the bills.
30:46
Jeremy Whitley: Absolutely.
30:47
Tad Eggleston: And also, like, there are worse things in the world.
30:51
Jeremy Whitley: It's also such a cool thing, because, like, my… people that come see me at shows are some of the coolest, like.
30:58
Jeremy Whitley: excited fans that are just, like, so… so excited to tell me about what they love about Princess, or the Dog Night, or, Navigating With You, or the Gwynpool story I did, the… because of, like.
31:12
Jeremy Whitley: the rep and the sort of things I do, I always have, like, people who are very excited to talk about them and to meet me. And that's… even if, like, I'm not necessarily raking in the big bucks, like, going to a convention
31:24
Jeremy Whitley: I know for, like, some comic creators, it's like this hugely stressful thing where they have to deal with
31:31
Jeremy Whitley: certain types of fans that they don't like or they have to answer questions that they don't want to answer and for me it's just like yeah I'm going to go talk to people about stuff that I'm excited about for you know for a whole weekend.
31:43
Tad Eggleston: They're excited about.
31:45
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
31:46
Jeremy Whitley: And the only real problem with that so far is that Princess is 15 years old now, so I occasionally have
31:55
Jeremy Whitley: So this has been a lot in the last couple of years. Full grown adult women come up to my table and like, oh, Princeless, that was my first comic. I loved that when I was a little girl. And it's just like.
32:10
Jeremy Whitley: Wait, hold on, how old are you?
32:13
Jeremy Whitley: Okay, you're… 23, so… yeah, you would have been 8!
32:19
Jeremy Whitley: 8 when this book started, so…
32:22
Jeremy Whitley: yeah I guess it was your first comic oh my God I'm gonna I'm just turning into bones in front of them you know just
32:30
Jeremy Whitley: Ugh.
32:31
Tad Eggleston: Have you ever seen, you're reminding me of, have you ever seen a Empire Records.
32:39
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
32:40
Tad Eggleston: You were my favorite artist when I was a kid.
32:43
Tad Eggleston: Who's your favorite artist now?
32:46
Tad Eggleston: Still you!
32:51
Jeremy Whitley: Now.
32:54
Jeremy Whitley: But… Yeah, it's, it's,
32:57
Tad Eggleston: least you have.
32:57
Jeremy Whitley: Something like that.
32:58
Tad Eggleston: The, it's for my mom. I don't even know who you are yet.
33:06
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I've only pulled that on people at conventions a couple of times.
33:10
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
33:11
Jeremy Whitley: That's pretty rare. I…
33:15
Jeremy Whitley: I did that to Brutus the Barber Beefcake at one point at a show. For anybody who is… who watched WWF wrestling in the 80s, you know, he was my mom's favorite hunky wrestler who, you know, whose whole thing was being.
33:32
Jeremy Whitley: Of working in a hair salon, having clippers and
33:35
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I met him at a show a couple of years ago, and I was like, hold on. I need to. I need to get a signature from you for my mom.
33:44
Tad Eggleston: And you, and you, you were willing to say that to, to Brutus.
33:48
Tad Eggleston: The Barber Beefcake!
33:51
Tad Eggleston: I had to get him to sign it. that he was gonna, like…
33:54
Jeremy Whitley: I had to get him to sign it to my mom. I mean, it was pretty obvious, Joyce, I don't look like a Joyce.
34:00
Tad Eggleston: You could have… you could have… you could have claimed Boy Named Sue, you know, my… my parents…
34:07
Tad Eggleston: They wanted to toughen me up!
34:10
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
34:12
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you ran the risk of him toughening you up.
34:16
Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, on one side, brave man.
34:18
Jeremy Whitley: Great.
34:19
Tad Eggleston: man Go to professional wrestler.
34:24
Tad Eggleston: As a grown man, and say that you're getting a signature for your mom.
34:29
Tad Eggleston: Who liked him back when you were a kid.
34:34
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
34:36
Jeremy Whitley: I mean, it's a little terrifying to think about now.
34:38
Tad Eggleston: Although…
34:40
Jeremy Whitley: know.
34:40
Tad Eggleston: You didn't think about it in the moment, you just…
34:43
Jeremy Whitley: I think…
34:44
Tad Eggleston: Mom means so much to you that you're like, I just have to go do this.
34:48
Jeremy Whitley: That's right.
34:48
Tad Eggleston: until… it wasn't until after he folded you in half and put you in the garbage can and gave you the autograph that you went, oh, I could have handled that differently.
34:59
Jeremy Whitley: I just, you know, I was a guest at that same show, so I just watched all the wrestlers come into breakfast where they were serving, they were serving sausage, egg, and cheese, biscuits. I watched all the wrestlers, to a man, come in and dump the sausage and egg onto their plate and throw the biscuits away.
35:21
Jeremy Whitley: Just eat a pile of protein and none of the carbs.
35:25
Tad Eggleston: Sounds about right.
35:27
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah. So I think at that point, I was just. At that point, I was just thinking about how weird all of them are.
35:34
Jeremy Whitley: Umm.
35:36
Tad Eggleston: Oh… The con life is interesting.
35:42
Tad Eggleston: Speaking of Princeless, Any… any news? Because… because I know the last time we talked, there were inklings that…
35:52
Tad Eggleston: That it might return to print, might…
35:56
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, nothing, nothing solid yet. We're still…
35:59
Tad Eggleston: Nothing we can talk about yet. Rich.
36:00
Jeremy Whitley: I'm still working on it, but, you know, hopefully it's, you know, it's definitely something that I want to…
36:05
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I figured I would have known, but on the off chance, you were gonna go, oh!
36:11
Tad Eggleston: actually.
36:12
Jeremy Whitley: news!
36:12
Tad Eggleston: I am allowed to announce it now!
36:16
Tad Eggleston: I was gonna send out that email tomorrow, but we can start here.
36:22
Jeremy Whitley: Well, hopefully…
36:23
Tad Eggleston: Never gotten to break news, Jerry.
36:25
Jeremy Whitley: Hopefully I'll get a sense to… I'll get a chance to break some kind of news on that in the future, but yeah, we're still…
36:31
Tad Eggleston: I was gonna get to break news once, and then…
36:35
Tad Eggleston: The publisher went bankrupt, and the book never came out.
36:39
Jeremy Whitley: Oh, no.
36:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
36:41
Tad Eggleston: I've been lined up. I was the one that was gonna get to break a book that's still one of the best first issues.
36:48
Tad Eggleston: I have ever read, and it's never gonna get published. Or almost certainly never gonna get published, because… Because…
36:57
Tad Eggleston: Everybody's had to move on, so managing to come back and do any of the other issues is next to…
37:03
Tad Eggleston: impossible.
37:05
Tad Eggleston: Because that's the way it works.
37:07
Jeremy Whitley: Anyone else?
37:08
Tad Eggleston: It wasn't the one that you…
37:12
Tad Eggleston: dealt with the bankruptcy. It was the other A company that.
37:16
Jeremy Whitley: algorithm.
37:17
Tad Eggleston: bankruptcy.
37:20
Jeremy Whitley: I know the one of which you speak.
37:23
Tad Eggleston: And I think most people will. I just, like, my thing is not as much that I don't want to shame them or whatnot, as much as I want to shame them by not being willing to say their name.
37:37
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
37:38
Tad Eggleston: Zero free publicity from me.
37:43
Jeremy Whitley: There was just a time period within a couple of years there where there was a good.
37:49
Tad Eggleston: There were… there were… I mean, you're at Mad Cave now, and, like.
37:53
Tad Eggleston: There had been 3 companies in relatively short order that had done
37:59
Tad Eggleston: Really amazing things for a short period of time, and then you found out they weren't paying people.
38:07
Tad Eggleston: And then Mad Cave… And admittedly, it was technically Mad Cave's 10th anniversary, but it also felt like they, like, seriously upped their game.
38:18
Tad Eggleston: And I was, like, I remember Tyler and I actually talking about it on air without naming Mad Cave. It's like, we want to be gushing over this company.
38:28
Tad Eggleston: And we need to know more, because we've gushed over a couple of other companies that we wound up having to go, you motherfuckers.
38:38
Tad Eggleston: So I went to C2E2,
38:41
Tad Eggleston: And, like, made a beeline for a friend of mine who was working for them.
38:47
Tad Eggleston: Because I just needed to know. He's like, dude, they pay in direct deposit.
38:53
Tad Eggleston: And I didn't realize that that wasn't actually a huge thing in comics, because, like, in most of the world, we started doing direct deposit 20, 30 years ago, but…
39:02
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
39:03
Tad Eggleston: Apparently, that's not actually common in comics.
39:07
Jeremy Whitley: Well, yeah, and it's just comics also even I mean publishing in a wider sense has a real.
39:13
Jeremy Whitley: problem with, like.
39:15
Jeremy Whitley: All right, this this book is technically signed, but the contract isn't done. But, you know, you'll need to have it done by this date, but you're not going to get the contract.
39:27
Tad Eggleston: Until this day…
39:28
Jeremy Whitley: for that, so…
39:30
Jeremy Whitley: You have to be working on this thing without a signed contract if you're gonna get it done on time.
39:36
Jeremy Whitley: yeah, so it's… It's, you know, very Wild West that way.
39:42
Tad Eggleston: But then he wound up impressing me even more, because he's an artist. He's like, yeah, no. Wednesdays become my most productive night, because paychecks go out on Thursday, and if I get the page in by midnight on Wednesday, it'll be on the next day's paycheck.
40:01
Tad Eggleston: But like, okay, okay.
40:03
Jeremy Whitley: if.
40:03
Tad Eggleston: We can plug Mad Cave now.
40:07
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I mean, they've had some reorganizing in the past.
40:10
Tad Eggleston: They have.
40:11
Jeremy Whitley: So…
40:11
Tad Eggleston: They… I mean, every… every company has… has growing pains. I… I… actually, I think it was even your editor on Navigating With You that I wasn't thrilled with the way
40:25
Tad Eggleston: They were let go.
40:28
Tad Eggleston: Because the timing kinda… was beyond rude.
40:35
Tad Eggleston: But I also don't know enough about the financial realities, I don't know enough about
40:41
Tad Eggleston: Anything to be willing to, like…
40:43
Tad Eggleston: Go hardcore, cause… cause they don't seem to be…
40:48
Tad Eggleston: Shipping people on a regular basis, they don't…
40:52
Tad Eggleston: They continue to put out good product. I kind of assume that anytime you've got a
40:58
Tad Eggleston: Any sort of corporate.
41:01
Tad Eggleston: group That there are gonna be things that I don't like.
41:06
Tad Eggleston: So, so the question is, are there more things that I don't like than that I do like?
41:11
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
41:13
Tad Eggleston: You know.
41:16
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, perfect.
41:17
Tad Eggleston: Go ahead.
41:18
Jeremy Whitley: They've been through some changes, and I think, you know, none of that stuff is ever perfect. There are certainly people that I loved that used to be there that aren't there anymore.
41:26
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
41:27
Jeremy Whitley: But I don't think it's anything near… comparable to… I mean, that…
41:34
Jeremy Whitley: 2 or 3 year period where I think we had very similar stuff with God, I'll say it. Action lab aftershock scout and black mask all sort of like.
41:46
Jeremy Whitley: Had issues with paying people, and had issues with
41:49
Jeremy Whitley: Turning stuff around and then, you know, started disappearing.
41:56
Tad Eggleston: Black Mask, it seems like, and you might know more than I do.
42:00
Tad Eggleston: It was more getting stuff out. They really tried to get people paid.
42:07
Tad Eggleston: But the next book became really…
42:11
Tad Eggleston: Because I haven't… I haven't had as many people I know that work at Black Mask that aren't still friends with the guys over there. It's just that once they outgrow them.
42:20
Tad Eggleston: You know, it's like, oh no. Other publishers want me, and they can publish my book every month, rather than having to wait until enough copies of the last one have sold to print the next one.
42:33
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I think, you know, Black Mass was always… I, like, I didn't work with them directly, but I know enough people who did that I can say, like, it was always a physically tiny operation, and, like.
42:45
Jeremy Whitley: just that meant, you know, workflows and money flows were always kind of tight, and you know I don't know anybody who, just like those other companies, just straight up didn't get paid.
42:58
Tad Eggleston: Right.
42:58
Jeremy Whitley: So it was a lot of, like.
43:00
Tad Eggleston: I also… I also haven't heard it… I mean, they're a great example of how hard it is to be a comic company, period.
43:07
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
43:07
Tad Eggleston: Right.
43:09
Tad Eggleston: I mean, for that matter, you know, this is… this is probably in the gray area in between. Silver Sprocket is a great example of how hard it is to be a… you know, where there are some people that defend them out the wazoo, and there's some people that absolutely can't stand the guy and think that he's…
43:25
Tad Eggleston: You know, and I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle, you know, because… like…
43:34
Tad Eggleston: When it comes to the A, A, and S.
43:37
Tad Eggleston: They pretty clearly made promises that they didn't deliver on.
43:42
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
43:43
Tad Eggleston: Black Mask, I haven't heard anybody who thought that they were getting something.
43:50
Tad Eggleston: More than they wound up getting.
43:51
Tad Eggleston: the kind of new… And… and Silver Sprocket.
43:59
Tad Eggleston: I think sometime… I mean, again, and this is… this is from second- and third-hand stuff and observation from afar, so all of it… for my listeners out there, and certainly any lawyers who might be listening, this is pure speculation.
44:13
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
44:14
Jeremy Whitley: And I think it's one of those things where…
44:15
Tad Eggleston: It's like industry speculation, but I think.
44:18
Jeremy Whitley: Sometimes with those things, the most disastrous thing you can do is be successful, because they don't have the infrastructure to handle success.
44:26
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, and specifically, I think there, like, the person that…
44:35
Tad Eggleston: The person that was sold the biggest bill of goods?
44:38
Tad Eggleston: was the person… selling. Like, I think he made himself believe that he was doing better.
44:45
Tad Eggleston: And therefore made other people believe that he was doing that well. I don't think it was a case where he was lying to them.
44:54
Tad Eggleston: I think it was a case where he had certain blinders on.
44:58
Tad Eggleston: Because he believed in his product, and he believed in himself, and he believed in the creators, and…
45:07
Tad Eggleston: And I'm glad I can't remember his name, because I don't want to defame anybody, particularly when I don't… I don't know. And, like, there are definitely…
45:16
Tad Eggleston: Definitely.
45:19
Tad Eggleston: Business is hard to begin with. Comic business is that much harder.
45:25
Tad Eggleston: I guess when it comes to the 2A companies, the thing that got me the most was how much money they owed to people that I'd never heard of that were supposedly trying to sell their books to Hollywood.
45:39
Tad Eggleston: And I'm sitting there going…
45:41
Tad Eggleston: You understand that if it's good enough to make a movie, they'll come to you.
45:46
Tad Eggleston: So… so, to have these major debtors.
45:51
Tad Eggleston: The ones that get paid first, not be your creators, was just a dumb business plan to begin with.
45:58
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
46:00
Tad Eggleston: It's true. You don't spend… you don't spend $20,000 to make a book, and then… and then $100,000 trying to sell it to Hollywood.
46:11
Tad Eggleston: Anybody who thought that was a good idea.
46:15
Tad Eggleston: Like… Doesn't… Understand creativity or sales?
46:23
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
46:25
Tad Eggleston: But.
46:26
Tad Eggleston: But that's a whole other tangent that's not as much fun. And we're starting to hit the time where I get to ask fun, fun. Questions, because I love my closing questions.
46:38
Tad Eggleston: One of them you haven't done before, because it came for Season 5, this fifth year that we're in right now. And it's been, I think, a little bit more than a year since you were on.
46:49
Tad Eggleston: I can check that, I still have that window up.
46:52
Tad Eggleston: Oh, boy.
46:57
Tad Eggleston: It has been.
47:03
Tad Eggleston: February 7th… no, no, it hasn't been more than a year.
47:05
Jeremy Whitley: That's.
47:06
Tad Eggleston: It was earlier.
47:06
Jeremy Whitley: Probably just less than a year.
47:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
47:09
Jeremy Whitley: starter.
47:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you might have heard this question before. You've probably heard this question before. Because, I mean, now that I think about it, it kind of started with Matt… I don't remember if they were the first ones that I asked the question, but they were the ones that gave me such good answers that it became an
47:28
Tad Eggleston: every episode question. The first time I had Matt Wagner and Kelly Jones on for their Dracula books, which… which the fourth book… fourth and final book is kickstarting right now. Anybody who loves Dracula would love those books. You're a horror guy, if you haven't read the Matt Wagner, Kelly Jones Draculas, they're…
47:46
Tad Eggleston: Really good.
47:49
Jeremy Whitley: I'm very behind on my reading, but that…
47:50
Tad Eggleston: I… I am… I am not a horror guy, and I'm sitting here saying they're really good.
48:00
Tad Eggleston: So…
48:02
Tad Eggleston: fifth year of the podcast, I feel like I've fallen into the Twilight Zone. I get to reach out to Jeremy Whitley and say, hey, let's talk. I get to… it was Sherman Alexi two nights ago, not only talking to him, but we were book clubbing something. We weren't even talking about his work. We picked a different book to read. How cool is that?
48:22
Jeremy Whitley: That is cool.
48:24
Tad Eggleston: And that's my life now. I don't know how.
48:28
Tad Eggleston: And if you told me even 6 years ago, I would have been like, what the fuck are you smoking? What the fuck are you smoking?
48:36
Tad Eggleston: that… That sort of thing is just gonna be something that happens in my life on a regular basis.
48:43
Tad Eggleston: I found that that's true of everybody in comics.
48:47
Tad Eggleston: We all have those experiences that if we told our pre-comic selves, and certainly our, like, teenage fanboy selves, hey, you're gonna hang out with so-and-so at this con, or at every con, or…
49:04
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you already used up one of the good ones, because you already talked about how cool it is to have people come up to the table and tell you how meaningful your work is. So you don't get to do that again in the same episode. Maybe next time.
49:18
Tad Eggleston: Unless you've got a really good specific story.
49:21
Tad Eggleston: I'll take a really good specific story. But yeah, tell me one of your surreal, pinch-me, oh my god, was that Jeremy Whitley that got to experience that?
49:32
Tad Eggleston: moments in comics.
49:36
Jeremy Whitley: Oh.
49:40
Jeremy Whitley: I feel like I've… I've had a lot of them. If you… if you've guessed at enough conventions, they start to…
49:48
Jeremy Whitley: Rack up.
49:51
Jeremy Whitley: I think one of the strangest ones for me was during the pandemic, I got invited to do a lot of, you know.
49:58
Jeremy Whitley: Panels online, and because so many…
50:02
Jeremy Whitley: actors and things were, you know, not working at that point. There was a lot of points where it's just like. yeah, we're gonna have this actor on this panel.
50:12
Jeremy Whitley: And one of the wildest ones was like, I was on a panel at one point with Susan Egan online, who's like.
50:17
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
50:18
Jeremy Whitley: You know, she's Megara from Hercules. She is the, you know, Broadway version of Beauty or Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
50:27
Jeremy Whitley: That's wild. I think…
50:32
Jeremy Whitley: I'm… if you asked me this last time, I'm curious what I said last time, because…
50:39
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm not smart enough to write these down. We'd have to go back and listen to the episode.
50:44
Tad Eggleston: I mean, if you really want to, I could pause, and we could go listen to it together, but…
50:50
Jeremy Whitley: The one I wanna say is, like…
50:53
Jeremy Whitley: I have a feeling of, like, I don't know that I could have not said this,
51:00
Tad Eggleston: You can say it again. If I decide I remember it, then I'll ask you to give me another one.
51:09
Jeremy Whitley: Alright, let me, 1
51:17
Jeremy Whitley: Oh.
51:18
Jeremy Whitley: Sorry I messed up my computer.
51:26
Jeremy Whitley: Oh no, I've lost you. Hold on.
51:29
Tad Eggleston: I'm still here.
51:30
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, sorry, I was… it did something weird and maximized one of my windows.
51:38
Jeremy Whitley: Alright. So, I think… Probably the wildest one was,
51:45
Jeremy Whitley: I was at a con in South Carolina,
51:49
Jeremy Whitley: and I was I was a guest at. It was just South Carolina comic Con in in Greenville, South Carolina, and
51:57
Jeremy Whitley: They had a green room that was set up on the second floor, away from everybody on the floor, and they just had somebody come through and tap me and say, you know, there's food in the green room, whenever you're ready, come on by.
52:09
Jeremy Whitley: and I had a bit of a break. So I went up to the green room, and they had, you know, a bunch of boxes of Papa John's pizza laid out on the table to go through, and
52:19
Jeremy Whitley: And grab stuff, and a lot of the other guests were there, comics people that I knew. And I was going through and getting pizza, and…
52:27
Jeremy Whitley: There was this conversation going on.
52:30
Jeremy Whitley: about… sword fighting, and about, like, sword fighting in movies, especially, and…
52:40
Jeremy Whitley: there was this whole like conversation about who were the the best people who've done this. And you know.
52:48
Jeremy Whitley: The original Robin Hood movie, and how much you know who had learned what from who? And I was like.
52:56
Jeremy Whitley: I recognize these voices, and, like, I look up, and… Carrie always…
53:05
Jeremy Whitley: who, you know, is Wesley in The Princess Bride, who's a dragon at Roberts.
53:10
Tad Eggleston: Right.
53:10
Jeremy Whitley: Talking to Adrian Paul from Highlander.
53:13
Jeremy Whitley: about… All the, like, various sword fights that they've done.
53:18
Jeremy Whitley: In these movies, and like… how much they both love Errol Flynn, and, like.
53:25
Jeremy Whitley: I'm just… I'm getting this pizza, and I'm just, like, suddenly moving very slowly to get the pizza, and then I'm just like, I'm just gonna sit
53:33
Jeremy Whitley: Over here, and just listen to the… like, I don't want to be part of it. It's a very, like…
53:39
Jeremy Whitley: you know, Donald Glover, like, I wanted a signed photograph kind of thing, where I was just like.
53:44
Tad Eggleston: I.
53:44
Jeremy Whitley: I just want to hear the rest of this conversation between these two.
53:49
Jeremy Whitley: legends who I, you know, grew up watching them on TV about their love of, like, sword fighting in movies.
53:57
Jeremy Whitley: And I really just like I sat there ate Papa John's pizza for like 10 min. They both went up to go sign stuff, and I was like.
54:07
Jeremy Whitley: All right. I've got that one stored in my brain for the rest of my life. Like, that's such a cool.
54:14
Jeremy Whitley: thing to just, like, stumble on. Yeah.
54:17
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, and that's just, like… It's the way it's…
54:19
Tad Eggleston: I mean, one or the other would.
54:21
Jeremy Whitley: Cons work.
54:22
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, one or the other would have been crazy awesome to stumble on.
54:25
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
54:25
Tad Eggleston: Like.
54:28
Tad Eggleston: And for the record, I went back, I'm looking at the transcript, that is not the story you told last time.
54:33
Jeremy Whitley: All right.
54:34
Tad Eggleston: The last time, it was realizing that on the email thread with Mark Wade and Tom Brevoort about
54:42
Tad Eggleston: about your Unstoppable Wasp book.
54:45
Tad Eggleston: that the atom was Adam Kubert.
54:49
Jeremy Whitley: Yes.
54:52
Jeremy Whitley: That makes sense, too, because, yeah, that was… I just… just got CC'd on an email to Adam.
54:59
Jeremy Whitley: Right.
55:01
Jeremy Whitley: From Brevoort. And I was like, Adam who? And I was like, oh, shit.
55:05
Tad Eggleston: Ha ha ha ha.
55:07
Jeremy Whitley: I should have written a better comic. Like, I've.
55:10
Tad Eggleston: I.
55:10
Jeremy Whitley: I did the best I could, but I feel like…
55:14
Jeremy Whitley: Should have… should have taken another 5 or 10 passes at it if I knew it was coming to Adam Kubert.
55:23
Tad Eggleston: Final question. It's my favorite question to ask. I've even started asking it of people not on the podcast, because it's just such a fun question to ask. Tell me something you love.
55:34
Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't have rules. Preferably storytelling, but we don't have rules. But something that you love.
55:43
Tad Eggleston: And not enough people around you have experienced it, and you really want them to.
55:48
Tad Eggleston: So that you have more people to talk about it with.
55:54
Jeremy Whitley: I love pro wrestling.
55:57
Jeremy Whitley: but especially independent pro wrestling.
56:01
Jeremy Whitley: Little shows, like… Armories, guys that just, like.
56:06
Jeremy Whitley: It's so much like little comic conventions, where it's like, these are guys that are getting paid
56:12
Jeremy Whitley: peanuts to be here, and they're putting themselves through some crazy shit because, like, it's for the love of the game, and they're just, like, trying to make it. Like, I'm a big fan of AEW, some of those guys are, you know, the best that I've ever…
56:27
Jeremy Whitley: done it. But, like, going to a, like, local show, and getting in those first couple rows, and watching, like.
56:36
Jeremy Whitley: Two guys who were, like, you know.
56:39
Jeremy Whitley: they're, like, school teacher and a dump truck driver in their daily lives, but, like, they desperately love pro wrestling and are here to, like, slam each other through tables just for these couple hours this night.
56:53
Jeremy Whitley: And, like, going to that, and, like, getting to cheer and be part of that crowd, and, like.
56:59
Jeremy Whitley: Especially with those shows, like, you get to talk to the guys afterwards, you get to go buy their t-shirts from them.
57:06
Tad Eggleston: Right.
57:07
Jeremy Whitley: Tell them what a great job they did and meet those dudes in person. : There used to be a local promotion here in Durham called Deadlock Pro Wrestling.
57:20
Jeremy Whitley: Every guy that ever came through there.
57:24
Jeremy Whitley: anytime I see any of them pop up on the TV, or, you know, suddenly get a big gig at a bigger promotion, I'm like, oh, that's my dude! Like, I talked to that dude for, like, 15 minutes after a show about, like, how much, you know, we both love
57:40
Jeremy Whitley: this one run on X-Men, or, you know, how much we're both fans of Matt Fraction, or whatever else.
57:49
Jeremy Whitley: And, like, that's… that's still, like, to this day, I see somebody get a… get a break somewhere, and I'm like, oh yeah, that's my guy! Like, I tell… that's, you know, that's like… I saw that guy… I paid 10 bucks to see, like, him throw another guy into the second row of the audience.
58:07
Tad Eggleston: I like it, I like it.
58:09
Tad Eggleston: I don't know if I'll be joining you to, be able to talk about it. Wrestling's never been my thing, but I keep wanting to give it more of a try because of the number of people in comics who love it. Like, it…
58:20
Tad Eggleston: It's, I think, a close second to… to baseball in terms of the only sports that comics people like. Thankfully, I already love baseball, so I can just… I can geek out with the baseball people.
58:32
Jeremy Whitley: I think it's… To me, it's also, like, it's a wonderfully interesting type of storytelling. Yeah. You know.
58:40
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's essentially real life superhero.
58:46
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, like.
58:46
Tad Eggleston: stuff.
58:47
Jeremy Whitley: You can't, or are in fact discouraged from scripting baseball, or football, or basketball, but you can, like, pro wrestling, you can…
58:57
Jeremy Whitley: make, you know, you can make it so the good guys win and the bad guys lose. You can tell a huge story.
59:04
Tad Eggleston: that I do love wrestling comics.
59:06
Tad Eggleston: Which is why… which is why I think it's possible that I could eventually get sucked into parts of wrestling, but every time I try, I just wind up with the stuff that's just too over the top for me.
59:18
Tad Eggleston: you know, I wasn't into it as a kid because it was too over the top, and I'm not…
59:25
Tad Eggleston: Just… I don't know, I just, like…
59:28
Tad Eggleston: I've reached a point where I have a much greater appreciation, among other things, like, too many people I know who are way too cool for me not to
59:36
Tad Eggleston: you know, one of the things I was gonna say to you is, like, if you ever find yourself at a convention with Jaime Hernandez, you're in as you figure out if there is a match like that in town, and then go invite him.
59:50
Tad Eggleston: Because I guarantee he'll go with you.
59:54
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I… there's a My Little Pony convention that I do
59:58
Jeremy Whitley: Almost every year, it's, you know, basically 2 out of every 3 years, it's up in Seattle, and there's, an amazing, like.
1:00:08
Jeremy Whitley: Indie pro wrestling show up there in Seattle area and I keep hoping one of these days I'm gonna go to that show and it's gonna be the same weekend that they're having one of their shows and.
1:00:18
Tad Eggleston: There you go.
1:00:19
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
1:00:20
Tad Eggleston: There you go.
1:00:21
Tad Eggleston: Well.
1:00:22
Tad Eggleston: Navigating with U2 is in stores on November 24th, just in time for Thanksgiving, so you got a nice long weekend to get the reading in.
1:00:34
Tad Eggleston: Jeremy, it's always a pleasure. I should come up with more excuses to bring you back.
1:00:40
Tad Eggleston: I say that to everybody, because I really like talking to everybody, but… but I… but I mean it to everybody, too.
1:00:49
Tad Eggleston: This has been 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.